Joint Economic Committee, Democrats – Report [PDF]: “Wildfires represent a growing threat to the health and well-being of communities across the country. The United States has already seen a devastating string of catastrophic wildfires this year in places like Maui, the western United States, and Louisiana as these disasters become more and more damaging due to climate change. This continues a string of deadly wildfire years that make the threat of wildfires to people and the broader economy increasingly clear. The total cost of wildfires in the United States is between $394 billion to $893 billion each year. This range was calculated by combining estimates from the existing research on the specific costs related to property damage, direct and indirect deaths and injuries, health impacts from wildfire smoke, income loss, watershed pollution, and a range of other factors. Each of these impacts on their own are very costly. Taken together, they represent disastrous consequences for the country. The JEC Democratic Majority’s analysis finds that wildfires in the United States cause between $394 billion and $893 billion dollars in damages annually, which is equivalent to between 2-4% of U.S. GDP. This range is notably higher than existing estimates in the literature, which put the total cost of wildfires at between $87.4 and $427.8 billion in 2022 dollars annually based on a smaller subset of costs. The economic costs in this analysis include: diminished real estate values, lost income, damage to watersheds and aquifers, insurance payouts, timber loss, property and infrastructure damage, electricity costs, evacuation costs, federal wildfire suppression costs, school and learning losses related to wildfires, insurance premium increases, and tourism loss. The health costs of wildfires accounted for in this analysis include direct deaths and injuries from wildfires, costs from short and long-term exposure to wildfire smoke, and psychological costs.”